FS1 and Undisputed are seeing ratings continue to grow. The question is, are they increasing enough to cover the costs?FOX Sports

UPDATED

It’s hard knowing whether the investment that FOX Sports made in Skip Bayless is truly worth a four-year contract that is reportedly for $25 million with a signing bonus. The deal reached in 2016 brought Bayless, his steaming-hot takes, and a whole lot of expectations to FS1, where the show Undisputed married him up with Shannon Sharpe.

As they say, there’s lies, damn lies, and statistics, and you can play the numbers game with Bayless on either side of your argument.

First off, FOX Sports informs that Undisputed is up +37% averaging 151,000 viewers for 2018 compared to an average of 110,000 viewers this point last year in 2017. When accounting for studio programming such as First Things First, The Herd, and other shows, to date in 2018, FS1’s daily studio shows are off to their best start ever, up +30% year-over-year. April of this year marked FS1’s 18th consecutive month of year-over-year growth in the weekday daytime timeslot (M-F 6:30am-7:00pm ET). And, FS1 has more than doubled its weekday daytime non-event audience over the past two years.

This is good, right?

The answer is it isn’t bad but it isn’t great. FOX Sports will take it all as they continue to grow the network that they hope one day stands toe-to-toe with ESPN, and not ESPN2.

But back to Bayless, due to the hefty paycheck he’s getting, the question becomes, are the increases really garnering the ratings that you would expect? A +37% increase looks great until you realize you’re not pulling in great numbers to begin with.

Richard Deitsch, formerly of Sports Illustrated, and now the sports media reporter for The Athletic who also does radio in Toronto for Sportsnet 590 The Fan has been a thorn in Bayless’ side. Deitsch has created a cottage industry of sorts around trolling Bayless with ratings numbers. Here’s a recent example.

Congrats to Undisputed for averaging an 0.1 rating in Chicago, Denver and St. Louis. But just ONCE I’d love to see this show collect on its millions in marketing and in-house ads on Big Fox by beating Paw Patrol and reruns of classic game shows on GSN. That would be greatness. https://t.co/9ZR3hrWio8

Just before Jamie Horowitz, the former head of FOX Sports’ programming was fired over claims of sexual harassment, he talked to me about how off-setting costs for doing a sports highlight show like SportsCenter plays against the costs of daytime studio shows like Undisputed. In July of last year he said that The Herd was running at a profit and the expectations were that Undisputed would, as well.

The real question is no longer about whether Bayless or Cowherd are better investments than sports highlight shows that have high overhead. The question is, could an on-air personality that would cost less in salary pull in like numbers? Their contracts are around half completed. We’ll know how FOX Sports really feels about what they bring to the table when those contracts come back up for renewal.

Maury Brown is the owner of Bizball, LLC, a research and analytics company, as well as a member of the BBWAA. Follow him on Twitter @BizballMaury or on Facebook.